Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Ep 96: Cultivating Patience: Strategies for Parents and the Power of Empathy with Leslie Bolser and Dr. Beth Trammell
Ever wondered why the line at the grocery store feels like a test of your soul's patience? You're not alone. This crossover episode with CEV includes my friend, Leslie Bolser, Creative Director for Core Essential Values, where we reveal personal battles with patience, especially in the throes of parenting. The struggle is real, but so are the strategies we share to help cultivate this virtue in ourselves and in the young minds we're guiding. From understanding the developmental limits of children's patience to the art of maintaining it with temperamental teens, this episode is your guide to nurturing patient relationships that can truly flourish.
Navigating tricky supermarket checkouts is small fry compared to the daily patience needed for effective communication with teenagers—it's a delicate dance we discuss. We commit to spreading empathy and kindness even in the smallest of interactions, because, let's face it, the world could use a little more patience. Join us on this journey of self-discovery and skill-building for the sake of our children's future, our sanity, and the unsuspecting cashier who just ran out of receipt paper.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
www.bethtrammell.com
All right, welcome back everybody. You know we're going to start this one out and introduce ourselves, like we always do, but I always say I'm so excited about this one, it's going to be so wonderful. I am not excited about this one, I'm dreading this one. I hate this word. That's why it's so important that we talk about it and that you talk about with your kids. My name is Leslie Bolser. I am very impatient and I am the creative director for Core Essential Values. We're a curriculum company that works with schools and families and communities to help kids be the very best they can and learn as much as possible in school. And I'm here, as always, with my friend, dr Beth Tramel. Can you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I also. This is a word that I probably need to talk about daily, because it's not. It's a word that I love for everyone else, but for myself it is always a little extra special. So I'm a psychologist, beth Tramel, and I work at IU East, where I'm the director of the Master's in Mental Health Counseling Program.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I mean I try to focus on helping adults who are around children, whether that's parents, caregivers, teachers to be more intentional with the words we say, and so this one is no joke, actually no no, and you know, as always, you already started off with something just talking about being intentional, and so the word is patience, and we're describing it this month is waiting until later for what you want now, and patience is a very good thing, and you're right. I would love everyone around me to have just oodles and oodles of patience all the time, because, lord knows, people need patience with me and around me. Right, it's real, it's real, but I like to move very quickly and I have not a lot of patience on my own. So treat me, beth, treat me, tell me what I need to do here. I have more patience.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we should probably start this conversation by saying this is one of these where, I mean, for me in particular, I'm going to tell you, like, how it's supposed to go and then maybe even share some moments where in my own life or in the lives of people that I kind of work with, it doesn't always go that way right. The truth is we've had oodles and oodles and oodles of science that say it's hard for us to wait. It is so hard for us to wait for things we want until later. It's just a really hard concept in general and it's also a concept that we ask our kids to do way more than is developmentally appropriate.
Speaker 2:The number of times I've told my kids right on a daily basis. So I have two bigs and two loodles, that's how I describe it. I have kind of two teenagers and then a 10 and an eight year old. And if somebody had a clicker you know one of those like little clickers when you know someone's going to an event and they want to know how many people have come it would be embarrassing the number of times that somebody could follow me with a clicker, that I made my children wait or I've actually said the word. You just have to wait and I just wait a second. Okay, well, first I got to do this. You just are going to have to wait, you know, you're just going to have to wait, you're just going to have to wait. It's just so hard to wait. So I think this idea of patience is one that we we find to be frustrating to teach because it's frustrating to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. That's a really great point, that's really good. So it's going to take me a minute to take my brain back to preschool and pre-K, but let's talk about with little folks. This has to be especially frustrating when you really have a lack of impulse control and you're three or four years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the reality is, when I do trainings or if I do consultation for preschool teachers, I basically say to them like it's inappropriate for us at this developmental stage to require them to wait much longer than you know a couple of minutes. I think there's kind of this rule of thumb I'm not sure if it's backed by science, but there's kind of this rule of thumb that you know kids can sort of tolerate one minute per their age. So, for example, if you're going to sit and read a book or you're going to sit and have an activity for a three-year-old, you can anticipate that they can probably chill out long enough for a three-minute story for a three-year-old. Now there's definitely science that suggests if we want to keep kids engaged, then giving them lots of opportunities to respond is really important. And there's some science that says that we should give them between three and four opportunities to respond every minute.
Speaker 2:And so if I have a child who has to wait for a drink of water for any more than just a few seconds, I need to give them an opportunity to do something right. So that's why, you know, if you drop your kids off at preschool or if you have preschoolers or young kids. You might see teachers who have a whole box of fidgets or you have them doing something standing in a line, they're singing a song, they're doing you know little puppet things like we're trying to teach patients at a very young age. But we have to realize that patience at a very young age is a very short timeframe. I'm talking like less than five minutes, which doesn't seem like a lot of patience For parents who are like I need to cook dinner and it takes longer than five minutes. Right, and I've had no breaks all day.
Speaker 1:So I'm already frazzled and now I have to do this all very quickly for you because you have a lack of patience which makes my patients run through, which makes everybody's patients just not so good.
Speaker 2:So instead of expecting lots of patience, we should anticipate and plan for needing to have them engaged. So for our preschoolers, we need to get them set up with something to do while I have other things I have to do Coming up with an activity they can do at the table while you're cooking and you're talking with them. Maybe they have playdough or paint, or they're in the kitchen with you and that takes a whole lot of patience. But you know, it's like instead of just expecting patience all the time, we need to focus on trying to keep them engaged or giving them something to do, so that we're not just always requiring patience.
Speaker 1:Does that translate to elementary as well? Is that kind of the same strategy to find something engaging for them to do in the waiting period, or are they a little more able to just simply wait?
Speaker 2:We all still suck at waiting. I mean, that's the truth. Even at a stoplight, nobody waits, even three cars at a stoplight, if there's the choice between. You know, there's two cars in this lane and there's no cars in that lane. 95% of us are going over to that lane where I don't have to wait for any cars. So waiting is a skill that we just all are terrible at. So our elementary age kids are actually at least a little better at independent play and they can have a little more independence. And so if you can make, you know, a couple of suggestions like OK, well, while I'm cooking dinner, you can either read or play with your Legos, and then, after I'm done getting our spaghetti on, I'll come and I'll see how you're doing, I do have a little more independence, so it makes it it's kind of like less actual waiting and more like they can do things on their own, and so I'm not sure if we'd call that patience, or maybe it's just we get them distracted, but they should have a little more tolerance toward waiting, but even still longer than five or six minutes. Just none of us are.
Speaker 2:You know, you've been in the grocery line Right when you're like the person in front of you. They're looking for their coupon, or oh, they can't find the right credit card to pay. Or oh, they're looking for this and they can't find it. Or, you know, we don't. We don't wait but a minute and a half and we're like, oh, this girl, you know, and it's like where you got to be in the next like 38 seconds, like, just, and I do this myself, leslie, right, you know where I'm just like okay, beth, take a breath. This person is frazzled. Right, she can't find her credit card. It's somewhere in her purse. She's doing her best. Let me not like sit here and roll my eyes at her. Let me not like into the cart, closer and closer and closer.
Speaker 2:You know like huff audibly. Let me just not need to do this. Let me practice and model patience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's funny when you describe it that way how intertwined it is with just empathy and kindness.
Speaker 1:Like our patients are. Our lack of patience when it relates to other people is directly tied to other skills we talk about right, which makes it I don't know maybe a little easier to think about it in those terms. When you think about it in terms of empathy and kindness and respect for others, maybe that makes patients slightly, slightly better, I don't know. So middle school and high schoolers for them, waiting until later for what you want now takes a really different meaning, I think, because there are so many situations where they feel like they are grown.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they should be able just to do the thing or have the thing or, you know, not wait until later. And it seems like it's a much more difficult conversation to be patient when they're older.
Speaker 2:It's similar in some ways to the conversation with any of us. You know, yes, I know you want it right now, you've got it in your mind right now. And because we live in a world where we have access to countless pieces of information on our devices that we carry with us everywhere, you know, we just are not, we're just not primed to really like hold information or just like hold an idea or just hold a desire and not act on it. Yeah, if I have a question, oh, I'm going to pull up my phone right now and I'll be able to have this question answered immediately. We're just not.
Speaker 2:You know, we've sort of got this. Our devices are great in many ways, and it also kind of perpetuates this lack of like waiting for whatever I want. Yeah, so teenagers also are in a stage of development where they are very what we call ego centric, and so that doesn't mean like they're focused on their own ego. What it means is like they're very focused on themselves. You know, if you have a teenager that you're sort of like, well, that was kind of a selfish thing to say, yes, that's because that's their stage of development.
Speaker 2:They, like, are aware of other people in the environment, they have social awareness, but the stage of development they're in really focuses on their personal and inside experience. You know, I've had conversations with my teenagers where, okay, I want this thing. And mom, can we get up and go to the store right now? Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Because you just get on Amazon right now.
Speaker 2:Right now they have to pause to actually like think out loud about, oh, mom is, mom is actually at her computer and she's working. But their initial thought is not about mom is working. Their initial thought, their natural state of development right now, this phase they're in, is this is my experience and what matters to me and so it must matter to everyone. Yeah, so that just means, hey, we got to continue to plant those seeds and train them. And again I come back to that idea of pause that we kind of talked about last month with peace right, where it's sort of like teaching them before they ask anything at all, before they like need something or want something. We can, we can teach them to pause, yeah, and say let me pause and think about how this will impact everybody else around me.
Speaker 2:How is me needing this thing for my art project in an hour? How does that impact my mom right now? What can I learn from that? Yeah, like I need you to pause and just think about this so that next time, when this issue comes up again, where you need something for school, I'm going to need you to think about how I can't disrupt my day, yeah, from what you need right now. Yeah, so what did we learn? How can we use this the next time?
Speaker 1:Right. How can we stop the argument before it happens next?
Speaker 2:time yeah.
Speaker 1:So one more question before we wrap up, and it's a little bit more about relationship building in patients with our teenagers. But I think most parents of teenagers will find that there are moments where your child is really willing to talk to you and wants to share some pieces of information, and there are other times where they're just not. They're just not ready to talk about something or share something, even though you maybe as the adult. In this situation, is there any correlation between patients demonstrating patients to them and being willing to wait until they're ready to share and talk to you about things, or those two totally different ideas?
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because, as you were starting to ask this question, I was thinking about this idea of smiling patients for our teenagers. I am like, ok, you have to unload the dishwasher. And they're like, ok, I'll do it here after I get finished. And I'm like, no, you'll do it right now, because if you don't, you're going to forget or whatever. And I can almost picture the bubble over my kid's head and they're like, mom, have some patience, because I'm asking for patience for them. So I think for me.
Speaker 2:I think about a couple of things with teenagers as I'm trying to model patients. I think about one why am I in such a hurry? Is my hurry my own lack of planning, because I wanted to sleep in? Because I jam too many things into one time frame? Like, is my hurry because I did a poor job of planning? Is my hurry even necessary?
Speaker 2:I find that sometimes I force my kids into this hurried state or they have to do something right now, right this moment, because I'm worried that we're going to be late, or another person is going to think a certain thing about me or my family because of this or that, and maybe I don't need to. Maybe I don't need to, maybe I am choosing to model patients because my kid just woke up and they've not been feeling well and they don't really feel like moving quickly and I can empathize with that. If I were sick I wouldn't want to. But in that moment I'm forgetting to empathize with my kid and have patients with my own kid because I'm worried that the dinner party we're going to show up to we're going to be 4 and 1 half minutes late. It is sort of like let me pause and let me see if this really matters. And so to your question about my timing to have this conversation is right now. I've had plenty of moments where there's been something in my life that someone has asked me about and I kind of am like I'm just not really up for talking about that right now and another grown up is like OK, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I tend to encourage parents of teenagers to focus less on the timing of our agenda, especially for conversations that are important to the child, and maybe wait for the timing for them. Now. You may not be able to wait like days and days, or maybe they just tend to put off every conversation. You may not be able to have patience for that, but you may be able to give patients and then an option, say, ok, well, if you don't want to talk about it right now, we could either talk about it tonight on the way home from practice or tomorrow as soon as you wake up, which would be better, yeah. So I think you can practice some patients and give them some options that maybe would be appropriate for both of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's sort of the I'm here when you're ready. But we do have some similar things along. That can be Right. But here are the parameters.
Speaker 2:I can be patient, but it can't be six months from now, right, I can be patient, but we're not just going to keep putting this off.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's great. I love that. All right. Well, I think we've covered it. I feel a little bit better about patience.
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 1:No, I still hate it, still hate it, I still hate it. Well, I feel a little bit better. I truly do so. Let folks know how they can find us if they want to know more, and then we'll definitely be back next month to talk about something else. So, for us, if you want to find out more about Core Essentials, we are on our website is coreessentialsorg. Where you can find us on social media at CEValues.
Speaker 2:And I am at MakeWordsMatterForGoodcom, and I have other resources on my website, blog, my book and other podcasts Excellent.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, let's come back next month. We'll be patient.
Speaker 2:We're going to be patient until the next month.
Speaker 1:We will. I won't have one single moment in the grocery store line where I have all my eyes OK.
Speaker 2:You know what, if that's all we do, that's actually making the world a better place, because it is very stressful at the grocery store, right when you don't have your credit card or you don't like something's wrong with your credit card or the machine or something. It's just very stressful.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're right, it is. We're going to have empathy and kindness for those around us and lots of patience, and we're going to work on our patience. Excellent, all right, we'll talk to you next month.
Speaker 2:OK, sounds good. Bye MUSIC.
